Ashokan

Twelve towns are under this water. At sunrise a man rows four of their people back down to visit, and rows back alone.

The narration

Who is underneath

Told in my own voice, over the film.

Twelve towns once stood in this valley. Shokan. West Hurley. Olive City. Brown's Station. Two thousand people. Five hundred houses, ten churches, ten schools, the mills, the blacksmiths. In 1907 New York City needed water, and this valley is where they decided to get it from.

The residents were given a few years to leave. They took what they could carry. The rest was torn down or burned, and the dead were dug up and moved to higher ground. Then the Esopus was dammed, and from 1912 to 1914 the water slowly rose.

The reservoir is a hundred and ninety feet deep at the dam. Nothing of the towns is left down there. The foundations were cleared. But I have never been able to stand on this shore at sunrise without thinking about who or what may still be underneath.

So this is what I imagine. That one morning the water lets them all go home. That the bell gets rung again, and someone opens the door.

The towns are names on roadside markers now, along Route 28 and 28A. The water remains, and it is still theirs.

Erik

Plates

Six images from the water

A man in a white straw hat drags a turquoise rowboat down a stony shore toward the Ashokan Reservoir at sunrise

The boat

Four people dressed for 1912 ride in the rowboat carrying a canary in a brass cage, a church bell, a milk can and a framed photograph

The passengers

“They took what they could carry.”

A woman in a dark dress and straw hat looks down from the boat at a village street under the clear water

III

Looking down

The rowboat on a lamp-lit village street under a ceiling of water, a band playing and people dancing

Main street

A church bell rehung in a white steeple under the water, sunlight streaming down through the surface

The bell

“That the bell gets rung again.”

The man walks up the stony shore away from the wet turquoise boat, alone

The shore

How it was made

A fiction, from a real shore

Every scene starts from my own photographs taken at the reservoir that morning, including the boats you see in the first and last shots. The images and motion are made with AI, then chosen and edited by hand. The narration is my own voice.

The history is real: about 2,000 people were moved out of the Esopus valley for the reservoir, some 500 houses, ten churches and ten schools were torn down or burned, the cemeteries were relocated, and from 1912 to 1914 the water rose. The towns survive as names on roadside markers along Routes 28 and 28A. The film is an imagining, not a reconstruction.

Photographs, story, narration & edit — Erik, Skypanther Studios

Images — GPT Image 2.5 via Higgsfield

Motion — Kling 3.0 via Higgsfield

Score & sound — ElevenLabs

Edit — assembled by hand

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Fiction told in real places · images and score made with AI · narration by Erik

skypantherstudios.com